


Light Through Glass

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Miria/Hilda, Claymore Secret Santa 2016, Gen, Gift Fic, Hints of reincarnation, Holidays, Light Angst, Not too much of a plot, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 06:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8958406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: Miria is adrift in the world, and Galatea, as always, knows when something isn't right.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NumberA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NumberA/gifts).



> Gift for NumberA, who asked for holiday angst and a modern AU. It's not _that_ angsty, but hopefully I delivered.
> 
> (I've heard that AO3 will do terrible things to formatting if you try to save something as a draft. If that happens, I'll fix it by the 26th.)

Miria sits curled up on an old futon with her legs folded beneath her, watching the city outside the window and thinking of nothing in particular. Christmas lights are strung along the balcony across the street, glowing in a soft blur of color through the frosted-over glass. There's snow this year, piled up along the roofs and window ledges, still drifting down in slow eddies. It looks like a scene from a postcard or a movie, beautifully framed and entirely unreal. It used to feel like that when she was a kid too, but in a brighter, warmer way, like a glimpse into fairyland. Now it just feels like winter. 

Music rises and falls, some hymn Miria doesn't recognize playing low in the background. Her roommate's doing, of course. Galatea might call herself a lapsed Catholic and devout unbeliever, but she keeps all the trappings – traditional carols on heavy repeat, candles on the coffee table and garlands adorning every wall of their apartment, filling the air with the scent of spruce and cinnamon. As far as Miria can tell, she _likes_ this time of year. 

And speak of the devil – Miria hears clinking in the kitchen, things being taken down from cupboards, and the next thing she knows, there's a mug of hot chocolate placed by her elbow. When she turns away from the window and the snow, Galatea is looming over her with an imperturbable smile and a mug of her own, a plate of cookies balanced on her arm.

Miria arches an automatic eyebrow, though she knows Galatea can't see her, and says, “How much schnapps did you put in that, exactly?”

“Enough,” Galatea says. “ _Barely_ enough. I know you're a lightweight.” She plops down on the futon with a sigh, somehow managing not to spill a crumb or a drop of chocolate, then sets the plate down between them. She selects a gingerbread star and nibbles it delicately, saying nothing.

Miria drinks. Doing anything else is hardly an option, with Galatea hovering like a mostly-benevolent alcohol-bearing mother hen. She tastes peppermint and rich chocolate, just a shade away from too sweet. It's warming, though, and she wraps her hands around the mug and takes another sip.

“Your verdict?”

“It tastes like a candy cane in a cup,” Miria says, then laughs to show she doesn't mean it. “It's good. Thank you.”

“It had better be good,” Galatea says. “I made it.”

“Arrogant.”

“Accurate,” she corrects. “Have you taken any cookies yet? You know I'll get fat if you make me eat all of them.”

“And what a tragedy that would be,” Miria says. 

“A terrible tragedy. And don't tell me to save them for later, you know I don't do self-denial.” She pushes the plate pointedly in Miria's direction and taps her foot until Miria takes a messily-frosted snowman and gives it an audible crunch. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a lot more vanilla than the recipe calls for... Galatea's not wrong when she says she likes too much of everything, immediately and without reserve.

 _Making up for lost time_ , she'd told Miria once, between chasing down one effervescent cocktail with another after they passed their first year of finals. Miria hadn't asked what she meant, but it had sounded a little like a confession, a little more like a secret shared, and back then it felt like she understood. There have been times when Miria felt that strange sort of urgency herself, kicking her heart into high gear and whispering in the back of her mind that life could be taken away at any moment, so she'd better enjoy it while it lasts. The night she left home for an unfamiliar city had been like that, and the night she met Hilda, seeing something she recognized in a stranger's eyes and deciding on a whim to be brave. Right now, though, she just feels cut adrift, waiting for a strong wind to push her in the right direction.

She watches the candles flicker as she and Galatea sit in companionable silence, eating and drinking, and she realizes she's grateful for all of it – the food, the companionship, the lack of conversation. It's easier, not having to put words to the things she's feeling, and for a while it's enough to let things be easy and not try to think. Then Galatea sets her mug aside, folds her hands on her lap, and says, “So, out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“Whatever it is that's got you so caught up in your own mind that even my extra-special secret cocoa recipe isn't helping you relax,” she says, with that familiar light amusement that says she knows exactly what bullshit sounds like and she isn't buying any of it. That's the problem with having Galatea as a roommate. She picks up on things – emotions, doubts, vulnerabilities – whether you really want her to or not, and she doesn't believe in leaving well enough alone. And Miria's just about to tell her so, when Galatea touches her arm briefly and says in a softer voice, “Are you really OK?”

“I'm fine,” Miria says. She takes another drink of cocoa and lets the lull of the music flow over her, distant voices singing of high holy things she doesn't believe in. She's very tired, and before she can remember why she might want to keep quiet, she finds herself talking again. “That's just the thing. Nothing's wrong. It's beautiful out there, and it's warm in here, and there's hot chocolate and cookies, and – Do you ever feel like you just don't belong here? Like you've been borrowing a life that you never earned?”

Galatea doesn't answer right away, and when she does, she speaks carefully, with no trace of irony at all. “I think if I told you anything that so much as implied that a life was something you had to _earn_ , you'd have been angry at me for a week. And I think you'd have been right.”

Miria gives her a hum of assent, conceding the point. It's a good point, even if that doesn't make much difference.

“But yes,” Galatea says. “Sometimes I do.”

“And what do you do then?” Miria asks.

Instead of answering, Galatea stands and pulls Miria up with her. She knows every inch of this apartment, provided Miria leaves things where they belong and keeps her clutter out of Galatea's space, and she walks without hesitation to the balcony door and steps outside, into the now thickly-falling snow. After a moment, Miria follows her.

The cold is bracing, especially with Miria wearing nothing but a wool sweater over jeans and a t-shirt. Snowflakes melt on her skin and catch in her hair and eyelashes as she walks to the balcony, missing her mug of hot chocolate already. But it wakes her up, like a slap in the face would, or a sharp reminder of something important she's forgotten. She isn't drifting now. Galatea has her face tilted up to the sky, but Miria looks down at the streets and the traces of people there – footprints on the sidewalk, blowing newspapers, trash cans covered over with snow. She can hear the traffic rushing by a few streets away, and music from one of the apartments across the street. Not carols. Some kind of electronic jazz that Hilda would probably know the name of, heavy on the brass and percussion and light on anything approaching predictable rhythm. 

“It's hard to argue with winter,” Galatea says. “There's nothing quite like freezing your extremities off to remind you that the world is real and we're living in it.”

“You're not wrong,” Miria says with a shiver, “but you might just catch your death out here.”

“We all do, eventually.” Galatea tilts her head, like she's listening to something distant that only she can hear. “Does that bother you?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Miria says quietly. “Sometimes a lot.” Maybe Galatea's right about winter, or maybe Miria's just lonely, but she's thinking of Hilda again, halfway across the country for the break but bright and _alive_. And her other friends too, Flora and Tabitha, Jean and Undine, and the guy who sells newspapers down the street, and the stranger across the way who likes music she's never heard of. All of that feels important right now – all of them feel important, for reasons she doesn't understand and isn't going to contradict. It's hard to say for certain, between the traffic and the drumming and the wind, but she thinks she hears Galatea mutter something to herself that sounds like _always did_.

“What was that?” she says.

“I said, lets get back inside,” Galatea says. “There's an unfinished hot chocolate demanding my attention.”

“I'll catch up with you,” she says.

“Just as long as you're in before you catch hypothermia. I don't think I want your girlfriend targeting me for revenge because you took a shine to one too many of my bad ideas,” Galatea says.

“She wouldn't,” Miria starts, but not before Galatea sweeps back through the door and lets it swing shut behind her, leaving Miria to the city and the night.

The solitude settles over her like a cloak, and for a moment she feels displaced in time, someone else's life pressing on the edges of her mind. Then the pressure fades and she's back in the present, freezing her ass off on a balcony in midwinter with the streetlights and Christmas lights shining through the snow. She doesn't feel lost. A little frozen, maybe, with numb fingers and stinging ears, but she knows exactly where – and who – she is. 

She waits a few seconds more, just long enough to offer up a salute to the city and the night sky, an automatic gesture with an origin she can't remember and a meaning she can't quite place. It's not meaningless, though. That much, she's sure of. Then her thoughts turn back to the taste of peppermint and too much vanilla, the warmth of a ceramic mug between her palms and Galatea's carols repeating until they all blur together like points of light through a frosted window. She has friends here, and that's worth remembering. She shakes snowflakes from her hair, smiling despite herself, and steps inside, out of the cold.


End file.
